Kent M. Rapp ’80 was asked what he wished to achieve in
water polo. “I want to be eating my Thanksgiving dinner in
southern California,” he answered without hesitation,
“at the NCAA championships.” Rapp, who was captain of
the Brown water polo team that year, got his wish. The squad was
invited to Long Beach, California, for the NCAA Championships and
finished seventh in the country. It was also a banner year on an
individual level for Rapp, who as a sophomore was Brown’s
first AAU All-American in water polo. He made All-American for the
second time in 1979 (his senior year), as well as All-New England
for the fourth straight year, and All-East first team for the
second year. And, also for the second time (the first was in his
freshman season) Rapp received the Marjorie B. Smith Most Valuable
Player award. Rapp was a consistent scoring leader for the Bruins,
leading the team with 75 goals his sophomore year, finishing at
number two his junior year with 60 goals, and collecting 61 goals
and 71 assists to regain the number-one spot his senior year. He
set a Brown career record of 231 goals, a record that stood until
last year.

Kent Rapp began playing water polo in the seventh grade in St.
Louis. He recalls that the sport immediately appealed to him
“because it combined my swimming ability (he swam
competitively through high school) with team sports, which have
always been my favorite.” He played water polo for St. Louis
Country Day School, was named to the All-State team in his junior
and senior years, led the team to the state championship his senior
year and was named state MVP. Recruited by Coach Ed Reed, Rapp
immediately became a mainstay of the Brown team. Water polo has
become particularly strong at Brown in the past ten years, and Rapp
now says, “It’s great to have been on the ground floor
of a program that continues to achieve new heights in its
high-caliber play and sportsmanship. It is not, however, a sport
that attracts large crowds of spectators. But that didn’t
matter to Kent Rapp. “We don’t do it for the
recognition,” he told the Providence Journal in
1979. “I just play because I love the game.” He has
fond memories: Of beating the New York Athletic Club for the first
time in Brown water polo history at the AAU Indoor Nationals; of
beating Loyola for the first time that same season; and of a very
special day in 1977, his sophomore year, when he was notified that
they had been selected for the NCAAs – the first time a Brown
team has been invited. Now employed in marketing for Johnson &
Johnson Baby Products Co., Rapp lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with
his wife, Jennifer Clayson Rapp ’81. “My father-in-law,
Davis Barr Clayson ’58,” Rapp notes proudly, “was
inducted into the Hall of Fame for swimming,” Could this be
the start of a Hall of Fame dynasty?